SUZY AND PAUL ON TOUR

 17^th February

We took breakfast in our van to escape the masses and visited Riverton Rocks before we left the quaint little town.

Like most days in New Zealand so far, the day had started off bitter cold and then by about 10am it was possible to take off a layer or two of clothing, to the point that by midday you might be able to wear shorts – that is until the sand flies drive to you to distraction and you cover up completely again.

So we stayed in the van to warm up, only stopping when it was pleasant enough to take our coats off at a well named very tiny island called – Monkey Island. Paul scaled the hill trying to beat the incoming tide and not get cut off from the mainland just in-time to claim the island as his own.

Tourist distractions on the South coast

We spotted another of these signs close by the road so jumped out again to do the Japanese tourist thing, stopping again at Clifden Bridge - New Zealand's oldest suspension bridge

Clifden Suspension Bridge

We drove through a very small town whose claim to fame was the best sausages in the area - not hard given it was the only town there - we stopped anyway. With the beef sausages on board we drove the New Zealand's deepest lake for a hot sandwich. to my dismay Paul went to take pictures whilst I witnessed a hoist dropping dead deer carcasses in the adjacent car park. They were loaded onto a lorry after the helicopter landed and I opted not to eat my sausage sandwich! Sorry - no pictures.


We drove further up the West coast and checked into a camp site at Manapouri for two nights. After dinner and my first encounters with the dreaded sandfly and the bites all over my feet - we went down to the waters edge of lake Manapouri to watch the sunset. 

Sunset over Lake Manapouri

It was the most amazing sunset I have ever seen. The sun took at least half an hour to disappear over the surrounding mountains and the colours changed for over an hour afterwards.